


Ignition

by CrimeBrulee



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Burnish Galo Thymos, Enemies to Lovers, I apologize because there will be significant Kray in this, I tried to write banter I really did LMAO, M/M, Rated M for future stuff, brainrot strikes again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeBrulee/pseuds/CrimeBrulee
Summary: Lio Fotia, leader of Mad Burnish, often finds himself head to head with rogue Burnish Galo Thymos.  As they uncover a sinister plot, they must put their differences aside for the future of the Burnish.
Relationships: Gueira/Meis (Promare), Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	Ignition

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to Alpha by Layto a few too many times around the same time that I saw a LOT of Burnish Galo fanart, and the brainrot told me to write Burnish Galo and Burnish Lio enemies to lovers. I'll prioritize Fragments for now but wanted to throw this up here. 
> 
> Naming it Ignition for now, but might change that?

Lio Fotia held two fingers to his lips, a flame barely illuminating pointed, black nails. He waited a beat, inching toward the mouth of the alley, then stared down the road. With a slight nod of his head, he closed his fist. The fire wisped out.

Out here, so far into the desert, not even the buzz of Promepolis could blot out the night around them. This compound lay nestled in the rocks, just a square mile of squat, unimposing buildings surrounded by electrical fencing and half a dozen watch towers—all trained toward the outside but pitch black inside. Unmanned, Lio had been promised. They would certainly see if that was the case.

The rasp of shoes on cobbled streets followed. Lio felt the warm tap of a hand at his elbow. 

“So far so good,” Lio breathed. “Empty.”

“Then our intel was actually good,” came the response, in a slight southern drawl, just barely detectable in a rough whisper. “Never know these days, Burnish or not.” He scoffed. 

“Let’s not let our guards down just yet--where’s Gueira?” Lio asked. He squinted his eyes. Periodic streetlamps cast hazy pools of light on an otherwise empty street. The rustle of wind through weeds and the occasional flutter of a moth interrupted the stillness. 

“Rooftops,” the other said. “Not that he’d really be able to see much of anything. Place isn’t lit at all.”

“Hm,” Lio murmured. “Right. Text him and have him meet us. We are going to have to break cover. Think you can take care of those lights, Meis?”

“I’ve been working on a new party trick,” Meis said, after putting away his phone. “Let’s see if it works.”

Lio could hear the satisfaction slathered into his voice. He smiled in spite of himself.

Meis raised a hand. He focused on the row of lights with a low hum, and clenched his fists. A crackle of electricity sparked each light bulb. They each popped in a sprinkle of glass.

Complete dark fell over the street. 

“Ho-ly. Shit.” A third voice—Gueira—just louder than a whisper, in a syrupy thick accent. “Teach me that sometime, yeah?”

Lio raised a finger to his lips, just barely illuminated by his nails again. “Gueira, inside voices.”

“Sorry boss,” Gueira whispered. He made a motion as if zipping his lips shut.

To anyone from a distance, the glow would be no more obvious than a lightning bug or a moth bumbling about. Even Lio had to squint a little to process the light. Darkness had a way of making one second-guess reality.

Gueira’s light traveled to his knuckles, still faint. He signed his next words. _Then let’s switch to sign language. So. What’s the plan_?

Lio signed back _. We have the illusion of isolation here, but we can’t assume. Could be a trap. We’re pretty far out from the city and this place is supposedly abandoned, so heat scanners are unlikely, but not impossible._

 _So in and out as quickly and quietly as possible_ , Gueira responded. 

_Yes, no traces that we were ever here at all_ , Lio said. _I have the compound code. I roughly know where the target is. With any luck, they won’t even realize it’s gone._

 _What’s the exit strategy if Freeze Force shows up?_ , Meis asked.

 _Light ‘em up_ , Gueira said. He emphasized this with a mimed explosion in a flurry of fingers.

Lio signaled confirmation at Gueira’s statement. _Get out alive at all costs_. _Now come on. And stay close. I don’t like the idea of splitting the party in this situation._

He gestured the two to follow, easing his way out of the alley. Though swathed in darkness, he felt exposed in the open like this. Any substantial burst of flame would give away their position in a heartbeat, their cover betraying them, but his entire body felt overwound, like a spring coiled too tightly. The voices in the back of his head urged him to burn—burn and be done with it. Throw caution to the wind and light the compound on fire, burst in and take what they needed-- 

Lio steadied himself with a deep breath and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

The walk toward their target felt infinite, a series of stumbling steps—the scuff of shoes on pavement and heavy breaths in the silence. The deeper they burrowed into the darkness, the heavier it felt—until at last Lio’s fingers grazed the brick of the building.

 _So far so good_ , Lio signed. He traced the building until he found the door, then fumbled to open the security panel there to punch in the access code. After a heavy click, the door unlatched, and Lio shouldered it open.

 _Fuck yeah_!, Gueira signed, pumping his fist into the air. 

Lio shot him a warning glance. _Let’s get moving, I don’t want to waste too much time._ He let darkness bleed back into his fingers.

Gueira and Meis followed suit.

Lio eased the door shut behind them. 

The inside was lit only with emergency lighting, in LED strips blaring red along the baseboards. It cast a ghastly glow into the hollows of their cheeks. Their shadows seeped high on the walls. 

“Not fond of this,” Lio muttered. 

“You think there are motion cameras?” Gueira whispered.

“Probably not,” Lio said, with a shrug. “Our informant said that most of the security was outside…This isn’t exactly one of their primary buildings. Now come on.”

Lio headed down the hallway, toward the back where elevators were. He pushed past them, shoving through double doors into the stairwell. The three plunged down into the darkness, hands on the rails. With each landing, descending, the air hung a little heavier—starkly cool against their faces.

“It’s well below freezing,” Lio murmured.

He almost never felt the chill of cold anymore—not in normal temperatures. Just _what_ was down here?

“Maybe just means we’re getting hotter on the trail—or colder, I guess,” Gueira said. 

Meis jammed his fingers into his armpits with a shiver. “Damn—forgot what this felt like.” His teeth chattered. 

Gueira sighed and shrugged out of his jacket. He dropped it on Meis’s head. “Here—you look pitiful shivering like that.”

Meis accepted it with a grunt and squirmed into it.

“What is their fucking electric bill like, I wonder—got their thermostat all the way to negative five billion and all,” Gueira muttered. “Astronomical.” He snorted.

“You know whatever is down here has got to be extra juicy,” Meis said. “Don’t think they have the temps this low just for some old files.”

“There’s no way that normal humans can make their way down here,” Lio mused. “Not without some heavy thermal gear.” He balled and loosened his fists several times, fingers numb through his gloves. The bite of cold seared red hot through his joints. Lio shuddered and slipped his hands into his pockets, jaw clenched so he would not shiver. He hadn’t felt cold since he was a runaway in the streets of Detroit—that winter before he’d turned. It was worse than he remembered.

“There it is,” Lio said. His sigh of relief came out as a heavy plume of crystalline air, illuminated by the track lighting on the floor. He punched in the same code on this door. It clicked open.

Yeah, for real. Thank god we’re Burnish,” Gueira muttered, as the trio shuffled through the door. “We would have frozen to death otherwise. Can you imagine? Just walking through a place, thinking ‘oh it’s a bit chilly but whatever, I’m gonna keep going, it can’t be all that bad’ then slowly freezing into a block of ice halfway down some stairs.”

“Indeed,” Lio said. 

The room resembled a hospital room, but so heavily caked in frost that it crunched underfoot and clung to the iron bars of a hospital bed. A lone IV drip hung in the corner, contents frozen solid. The blankets were still mussed. A half-eaten plate of toast had frozen into solid crystals. 

“Uh, what the living hell,” Meis muttered.

Lio frowned. His eyes darted to a newspaper on the table beside the bed.

Yesterday’s date and headline. “MAD BURNISH ASSAULT PROMEPOLIS. FREEZE FORCE TO UNVEIL ADVANCED NEW WEAPONS.”  
  
“Something tells me that we should get out of here.”

“What about those files, boss—”

“I don’t think we’ll find those here,” Lio said. He pivoted toward the door.

“Wait, uh, boss?” Gueira’s voice raised a pitch. He’d smooshed his nose to a heavy window in the back of the room. 

Lio joined him, squinting through the frost on the glass. Through the dim light, he could make out the glow of several dozen pods, each encased in ice. Behind the glass, the faint likeness of faces lay in repose.

“Ah, shit, what the _hell_ —” Meis spat, stumbling backwards. “I second Boss, we need to get out of here. We took one hell of a wrong turn somewhere—"

Lio’s jaw set and he sighed. “We need to make sure that they aren’t prisoners.”

“Boss—you literally just said we need to scram,” Gueira whined. “This is some walking dead shit.”

Lio sighed. “It’s likely a trap, but we’re already down here.” He yanked the door open.

A mist seeped from the room around his legs. A light flickered on overhead—motion activated.

Lio strode in, holding a hand to signal for Gueira and Meis to wait and keep watch. Each pod was approximately the size of a coffin, but rounded to conform closely to the shape of each body. Men, women, children—each lay as if asleep, a cool blue light illuminating their features, skin dull and eyelashes and hair coated with crystals. 

Lio’s fingertips skimmed the glass over them, as he peered down one after the other as if willing himself to recognize any of them. 

There was no way to tell if these were Burnish or not—or how long they’d been down here in these frozen comas.

“Boss? I’m seriously getting the creeps,” Gueira said. 

“One minute,” Lio called back. 

Could people really be cryogenically frozen then reconstituted?, Lio wondered, walking between the pods as if wandering a graveyard. Or did they cut their lives short on the whim of waking to a new world?

He swallowed, shaking his head, and drifted to a file cabinet toward the back. A little bit of flame, directed by his finger, slid into the lock. It popped open. When Lio tugged it open, a dozen fat files slouched forward, tucked in a row on little tracks in the drawer. Lio rifled through a few absently, finding pictures and names and signatures and dates.

He tried to process this—to even comprehend the names and dates and what should have been basic information, but it all swirled in his head with no purchase. He shoved the drawer shut after reading the same line three times without success.

“This isn’t why we’re here,” Lio muttered. As far as he could tell, these weren’t people taken against their will—and that was all that mattered to him.

“Boss, I think we’re in luck after all,” Meis called from the other room.

Lio slinked back in, tucking the door shut behind him. A deep sigh hollowed him.

“Boss?”

“What?”

Meis held up a flash drive. “Found a computer in here. Was able to access their main server. Got the info we need.”

Lio nodded, and managed a weak smile. “Then it wasn’t all a waste. Let’s get out of here.”

The trio jogged wordlessly up the stairs, two or three at a time, until cold gave way to lukewarm and then to hot again. Meis shed Gueira’s jacket and tossed it back, swiping sweat from his forehead with a grimace.

“Thank god,” Meis breathed. 

Fresh air hit them, clean and inviting, as they tumbled out the front door into the dark courtyard of the building. 

The outdoors, as still and hot as they had left it—waited for them as if nothing had happened deep underground. 

Lio sagged against the wall to catch his breath.

He didn’t have time to process any of this. They had to get out of there and back to camp. Whatever that was—no matter how arcane, was none of their business—

“Well, well, well.”

A prickle of irritation squirmed down Lio’s spine. 

“Not _now_ ,” Lio muttered. 

Even in the dark, he could make out the silhouette of a tall man, spiked hair swooping high over his head. He strode over, shoes biting the pavement. A snap of his fingers sparked a blue flame that danced over a square jaw and bright blue eyes. Dozens of metal spikes, studded into leather shoulder pads, gleamed the light back.

He was shirtless, a strap running across his chest just over his pecs. One arm pulsed with bright, blue scars that wound their way from his shoulder to his wrist, intertwined with the shape of bulging muscles. 

Just the way he _walked_ drove irritation deep under Lio’s skin.

“Galo Thymos,” Lio spat, widening his stance and balling his fists. 

Meis and Gueira took their place on either side of Lio. 

“Well, don’t sound so happy to see me, Firebug,” Galo said. He cracked his neck side to side. “Just what brings you to the area, hm?”

“I could ask you the same thing—these aren’t exactly your stomping grounds either.”

“A little birdy told me that you might be sticking your nose into affairs here,” Galo said with a shrug.

“Oh, so you just couldn’t stay away,” Lio muttered. “I fail to see how my nightlife is any of your business.”

“Ah, don’t be like that,” Galo said. He stopped just feet from Lio, lip curling into a smirk. “So, just thought you’d raid some old abandoned government facilities for fun, huh?”

“And you thought you’d be a thorn in my side for fun,” Lio retorted. “Just move aside, Thymos. I’m not in the mood for your antics.”

“Funny, because I’m in the mood for yours,” Galo said. 

“That’s between you and your god,” Lio said. “Now move aside.”

“Look,” Galo grumbled, “Everything you do just makes it harder for the Burnish who aren’t a part of your little gang. Maybe I’m just getting tired of that. You can’t just do whatever the hell you want just because you feel like it.”

Lio scoffed and tossed his hair over his shoulder. “We do things as we see fit. Like it or hate it, it makes no difference to me.”

“Nothing good will ever come of it.”

“Whatever, Promepolis lapdog,” Lio said. “We know the city has you on a leash. Don’t try to act so cool about it.”

“I only answer to myself—” Galo snarled. His fist came in hot, raging in a blue fireball that crackled with electricity—arcing in a left hook toward Lio’s head.

Lio ducked to one side. The brick beside his head splintered. A crack shot down the wall. 

“Whatever you say,” Lio said. He sprang upward, a dagger leaping from the flames trailing from his hand. He swiped toward Galo’s neck.

Galo stumbled back. The heat of the blade grazed his cheek. A feral smile unfurled across his face. His eyes lit hotter. “So you do wanna play.”

“If I don’t wear out the dog, it’ll destroy the furniture,” Lio said.

“So much for in and out without a trace,” Gueira muttered. 

He and Meis stood, fully armored, bulky and coursing with flames. They raised their swords toward Galo.

Panting, Galo took a step backwards, shaking his head as he surveyed the damage. The hole in the wall still smoked. “Oops. Sucks to suck—” He grasped thin air and a spiked black Harley ripped itself from the flames in his palms. He hopped on, revved the engine in a burst of sparks, and hurled down the street.

“Yeah, you better run—” Gueira yelled.

Lio summoned his own bike. “Gueira. Meis. Let’s get out of here.”

He stared after the plume of smoke and fire that Galo left, then to the thumb drive in his hand, and to the crack in the wall. “What a pain in the ass.”

They peeled out in the opposite direction.


End file.
